The Speed of Trust in Small Business
How trust accelerates decision-making, strengthens teams, and drives growth.
(Inspired by Stephen M. R. Covey’s The Speed of Trust.)
Stephen Covey makes a bold claim: “Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.”
Think about your own business. When you trust someone, you delegate faster. You communicate with fewer words. You move forward without second-guessing. When you don’t trust? Everything slows. Decisions drag. Emails multiply. Meetings pile up.
Why Trust Is Currency for Small Businesses
In large corporations, we often see institutional trust put into tried and true systems and processes. In small businesses, where often there isn’t the same level of technology, systems, documented processes, thorough job descriptions, or flow charts, there’s no such buffer. A lack of trust can literally grind execution to a crawl.
In these environments, trust is the system. It’s the invisible framework that holds the team together when formal structure is still catching up.
The Two Dimensions of Trust
Trust is a small word that has a wide range of meanings. When our words - or actions, more commonly - say that we don’t trust someone, it can mean many different things. Covey breaks Trust into two dimensions.
Character: This dimension of trust includes integrity and intent. Do I trust that a person is trying to do the right things for the right reasons? Are their motives benevolent or malicious? Are they aligned to a similar set of values or mission?
Competence : This dimension of trust includes capabilities and results. Do I trust that a person has the ability to do the necessary action and achieve the necessary results?
Simon Sinek has a great video about how the Navy Seals pick their teams: They evaluate team members on two axes—performance (competence) and trust (character). The SEALs would rather have a medium performer of high trust than a high performer of low trust. In business, however, we often overvalue performance metrics and neglect trustworthiness. Over time, that imbalance breeds toxicity—and ultimately destroys teams.
Building Trust as a Leader
Leaders take on a high magnitude of responsibility, fair or otherwise. Leaders are often expected to be perfect or close to it. While that is impossible, here are a few suggestions to help take some practical steps toward improving:
Set clear goals and outcomes – trust grows when expectations are defined. There’s a great quote by Patrick Lencioni that “Clarity if kindness.” A good leader provides clear, definitive, (and typically expeditious) decisions and direction so that managers and employees can get aligned behind them and work in the same direction. Clarity and consistency in goals, metrics, and expectations breeds trust in the leader, team, and across the organization.
Give authority with responsibility – if someone is accountable for a result, give them the tools and freedom to achieve it. Stay in your lane, delegate and elevate, don’t micromanage, pick your favorite cliche. Give space for your team to fail in small ways and they might succeed in big ways. Yes, leaders need to inspect what they expect, but extending some small amount of trust while being available for questions provides an opportunity for trust to grow through a series of small wins over time.
Model consistency – your team watches you. If your actions don’t match your words, trust erodes. Say what you mean and do what you say. Exhibit the core values of your company. When you fail, have the humility to recognize your failure, apologize, ask for forgiveness, and create new strategies for future success - just as you would expect your teammates to do. Leaders don’t have to be perfect, but they ought to be human. Humility is not necessarily lowering oneself, it is seeing things and stating them as they are.
Curiosity-based vs. Suspicion-based questioning - In healthy organizations, trust is built not just by what we say, but by how we ask questions. Patrick Lencioni explains that great teams practice curiosity-based questioning—seeking to understand with genuine interest and humility. These questions come from a place of respect: “Help me understand your thinking,” or “What led you to that decision?” Suspicion-based questions, on the other hand, sound like interrogation—rooted in doubt or defensiveness, as if assuming malintent. The difference isn’t in the words themselves, but in the heart behind them. Curiosity builds connection; suspicion creates distance. When leaders model curiosity, they invite honesty, collaboration, and innovation. Over time, this habit transforms not just communication—but the culture of trust that fuels organizational health.
The Business Case
Covey reminds us that trust isn’t a soft virtue—it’s a hard-edged economic driver. When trust is low, it functions like a tax: everything costs more and takes longer. Leaders spend time managing perceptions instead of performance, and teams waste energy navigating politics instead of solving problems. But when trust is high, it becomes a dividend—communication flows freely, decisions are faster, and collaboration feels effortless. In high-trust environments, people don’t just work harder; they work better, because they’re confident in each other’s intentions. Building trust isn’t just the right thing to do—it’s the most practical path to sustained growth and organizational health.
👉 Small business takeaway: If you want speed, build trust. Don’t just measure results—measure relationships. Because when your team is aligned in people, purpose, and performance, growth doesn’t just happen—it endures.
